Congress alleges corruption in Safe Kerala project of Left govt

Press Trust of India

Thrissur (Kerala): The opposition Congress on Sunday continued to attack the ruling Left in the state over the Artificial Intelligence (AI) cameras set up as part of the 'Safe Kerala' initiative, alleging serious irregularities in the grant of the contract for the same and the escalation of the project costs.

Senior Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ramesh Chennithala said the Left government entered into an agreement with the Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (KELTRON) in 2020 to set up a fully automated traffic enforcement system.

KELTRON then awarded the contract for the project to Bengaluru-based SRIT India Pvt Ltd, but in violation of tender norms, he claimed. Chennithala further alleged that SRIT, which had no experience handling such projects, subcontracted the work to a consortium of two Kerala-based companies who too were inexperienced in the matter.

While the companies, SRIT and the consortium, said that they will do the project for Rs 75 crore, the government projected a cost of Rs 151 crore which has now escalated to Rs 232 crore, the Congress leader contended and questioned why the amounts kept going up. Furthermore, one of the companies in the consortium had backed out from the project.

Speaking to the media here, Chennithala alleged that there was rampant corruption and irregularities in granting of the contract for the project and its implementation. He said it should be probed whether SRIT even had the financial capability to handle such a project as according to him, it did not. Chennithala also alleged that the money for the project would be paid to the companies in 20 installments from the fines collected from the public.

"So neither the government, nor KELTRON or the companies will have to spend any money on it. It is the general public which will be paying for it," he alleged. Besides the alleged financial irregularities, he also claimed that the cameras were only automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and not AI-based as claimed by the government.

"AI is a process. There are no such cameras. These are only ANPR cameras. To mislead people, it is being projected as AI cameras," Chennithala claimed and said that the party was not in agreement with the project and that Congress will oppose it. He said he has released the contract of the project and if the government does not disclose in the next few days the details of the initiative and why the cost went up, "I will release all the details".

In response to Chennithala's allegations, State Transport Minister Antony Raju told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that KELTRON has to answer the accusations made by the Congress leader. He said that the idea behind the project was to bring down the number of road accidents, due to traffic violations, and the resultant deaths. The minister claimed that since the implementation of the project, the number of accidents have gone down.

On Saturday, the Congress had alleged that the government was giving "exaggerated" and "unbelievable" information about the recently launched scheme. Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly V D Satheesan had said that according to the government a total of 726 cameras have been installed, spending Rs 236 crore as part of the project.

"Each camera is priced at around 33 lakh rupees. It is unbelievable that such a huge amount has been spent for a camera unit," he had claimed. The government has the responsibility to release the detailed estimate including the real price of the cameras and its installation charges, he had said. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had inaugurated the 'Safe Kerala' project, envisaged to reduce road accidents and traffic violations in the state, early this week.